This study of code-switching in late medieval legal texts termed Year Books responds to research by Herbert Schendl and Laura Wright on medieval code-switching. Each concludes that code-switching constitutes registers or discourse modes within specific text-types. Year Books examined in this study similarly develop specific discourse strategies by switching between Latin and French to encode the reporting of pleading and procedure. The sequence of switches in the reports serves primarily to format and organise case reports and secondarily to differentiate legal commentary from procedure and pleading. Legal reports, though not official records and likely used for reference purposes, are nevertheless witness that code-switching is a formalised mode of discourse within the common law profession.
2023. Introduction. In Medieval English in a Multilingual Context [New Approaches to English Historical Linguistics, ], ► pp. 1 ff.
Conde-Silvestre, J. Camilo
2021. Multilingualism and Language Contact in the Cely Letters. Anglia 139:2 ► pp. 327 ff.
Machan, Tim William
2012. Language contact and linguistic attitudes in the Later Middle Ages. In The Oxford Handbook of the History of English, ► pp. 518 ff.
Ingham, Richard
2011. Code-switching in the later medieval English lay subsidy rolls. In Code-Switching in Early English, ► pp. 95 ff.
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